2006/11/15

2006.11.14

0845 cast off Inner Harbour East Baltimore. We paid a bill of $24. for an extra day docking plus the total electricity bill..pretty good, we can understand how so many people winter here all the modcons, right downtown where the action is and at a reasonable rate.It is overcast but no rain so far and not cold, the skipper is driving as usual and I am making him tea, don’t let anyone tell you British Navy runs on diesel… it runs on TEA! Remember the famous Boston tea party. We passed the Federal Maas, discharging titanium slag from South Africa in Baltimore harbour.We are headed for a place called Herring Bay about 42 miles down the Chesapeake on the West side, we may anchor (no power = no heat) or tie up at a marina, we will see later about making resies.We are traveling in convoy with Heinz & Jacqueline Weber and their crew Carlos on their Little Harbour 53 “L’Equipe” and Andre & Louise Baby on the J-40 “Jem”. This buddy system feels quite nice although I am sure time will come when we will separate and probably join up again.. got to go for a min .. need to plot my 1100 position, and get you know who more tea!!! This means I’ll soon have to relieve him at the helm while he goes below to do the same.

The beauty & the beast... after the Federal Maas, this hideous car carrier passed us by loaded with Toyotas or such like for the North American market.

“Balto” was a really nice town, this was my first time and I truly enjoyed it, the people are extremely friendly and they have done a marvelous job with the old harbour front, the National Aquarium is very well done , probably one of the best ones we have seen.The only negative comment is that there seemed to be sirens going on all the time, walking back to the harbour I met a convoy of police cars and motocycles escorting a “bomb squad” truck, there is apparently a lot of crime, mostly drug related murders… one of the locals Bob Love, who lives aboard, you guessed it “The Love Boat”, asked us how many murders we had in Montreal a year, David said he thought it might be around 32 this year, Bob said they probably can beat that number in a week!

We are sort of getting into our “cruising mode” ie walking everywhere and carring our purchases back into our little “wheelie” bag like a couple of real old farts.

I will try to keep a running travelog going on Word and hope that I can cut & paste to the blog next time we have a wifi connection. The wifi in Balto worked erratically, with 3 laptops on board I felt like a one person IT department, interestingly enough, Dino, David’s old Panasonic Toughbook did really well with an external wifi card and I love the non reflective screen… so I take back all the rude remarks I made about it… sorry Dino!

We also made and entered in Excel a provision list and the stowage location of all 92 items on board!!! I am ashamed to report we have 15 boxes of whole wheat spaghetti …. So much for low carbs diet! So now when we need to prepare a meal we can go to the computer to find out where everything is (David stowed so I have no clue) hopefully Dino is a good cook too.We passed under the Annapolis Bay Bridge, Solitaire 1 having come full circle since we brought her up from Annapolis in May 2005.I better close for now or I will bore you all to tears…and I need to plot our 1200 position (ohmigosh I have been at this for over an hour!!!)